Aircraft configurations can change during fabrication for a number of reasons. As an aircraft proceeds down an assembly line the design of the aircraft may change. These design changes may be the result of engineering design changes, the availability of new construction kits, changing customer requirements, Federal directives inducing modifications, security upgrades, or other factors. Thus, the “as-built” configuration of a completed aircraft may be difficult to determine, with the difficulty increasing with increasing complexity of the aircraft. Further, the as-built configuration may not match any of the potentially multiple versions of the intended design specifications or desired configurations. Once built, aircraft configurations change during maintenance due to repair or upgrade of aircraft components.
Current solutions to this problem involve visual inspection of key components and parts. The parts may be difficult to access and the visual inspection process may be time-consuming and prone to error. For example, a visual inspection may require scaffolding and safety equipment to physically reach and/or access some components. These physical configuration retrievals performed manually can lead to human transcription errors, such as when there are distractions during the inspection process. Other solutions may involve manual investigation into records that were kept during construction, a potentially tedious process. Further, these records may have been kept by multiple vendors and may be otherwise unreliable. Without an accurate up-to-date configuration, those using the as-built or as-maintained configuration will be further challenged to perform maintenance and acquire accurate spare part inventory.